


song and light

by venndaai



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 11:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: Legolas was away much among the Galadhrim, and after the first night he did not sleep with the other companions, though he returned to eat and talk with them. Often he took Gimli with him when he went abroad in the land, and the others wondered at this change.





	song and light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/gifts).

The Company had been escorted to a well-appointed pavilion after their long descent from the greatest of the Mallorn-trees, and Gimli sat on a fine blanket, and wished it was the sweet-smelling grass instead. He leaned back against a very soft cushion, and listened to the sweet murmuring of the fountain outside, and let his eyes unfocus in the soft light, that glowed golden even inside a tent. His thoughts seemed crystal clear and glacier-slow at the same time.

The dark horror that had lain on his heart since seeing the tomb of his kinsmen had at last lifted, and he was dizzy with relief and gratitude for that; but the gloom and despair had been replaced with confused doubts and emotions he couldn’t quite place, and elves, thoughts of elves, that filled his head up with gold that grew on trees, not in the veins of the earth. 

After a while he became aware of the snoring of the hobbits, and he opened his eyes enough to exchange a fond glance with Boromir. He looked at Aragorn, but the Dunedain seemed lost deep in his own thoughts. 

Legolas was gone. He had disappeared with Haldir, before the rest of them had even reached the ground. Gimli tried not to begrudge it. If he had found Khazad-dum restored, full of his own people, alive and willing to show him all the wonders of the ancient great city, would he not have also been overcome with eagerness and abandoned his companions?

No, Gimli thought, sour despite himself, he would not have. But Legolas did not consider things from other people’s perspectives. Gimli had thought that was a weakness of elves, and not therefore Legolas’s own fault. But the Lady- the Lady had changed much.

“Gimli,” said a voice by his ear, soft and warm. 

He turned his head, too tired and lazy to feel any alarm. Legolas was crouched down, gazing at him, their eyes on an equal level. 

“Come with me,” Legolas whispered. 

Gimli’s eyes flicked to Aragorn, who was still lost in reverie, and Boromir, who had raised his eyebrows. Back to Legolas, who shook his head. “Just you,” Legolas said, and then, after a pause, “if it pleases you?”

Gimli felt a smile tugging at his lips. He got to his feet, ignoring the protests of his leg muscles, and went out with Legolas into the bright afternoon.

Which, he saw, was shading on towards evening. The sun still set, even in this unchanging golden land, even though Gimli could not see it above the impenetrable canopy of gold. 

Legolas led him across the lawn. They stopped several times, so that Legolas could talk animatedly with groups of elves. Gimli watched, wishing he had more understanding of elven facial language, and then realized that in fact he could understand Legolas, could see his companion’s eagerness and slight insecurity plain as if he was watching one of his younger cousins speaking with the older warriors. And yet the other pale flat faces were impenetrable planes of marble. It was curious. He had not realized the past months had given him such familiarity with the prince of the dark wood. 

He wished he could tell if these elves returned Legolas’s obvious regard. But he was too much a foreigner here; he could not know.

And Legolas is not foreign to you? he asked himself, and answered, No, it would appear not.

And looking at Legolas’s face as he spoke to his kin, he realized also: Legolas is young, by the measure of his people.

At last they reached the end of the lawn, and another tree. “Oh, no,” Gimli groaned, when he saw the stairs winding up. 

“Oh,” Legolas said, sounding genuinely taken aback and remorseful, “I did not realize- it is just that to see the sun set over the canopy of Lorien is such a beautiful sight- one famed far and wide-”

“A song about it, is there?” Gimli guessed, and regretted the shortness of his tone.

“Yes,” Legolas said, and amazingly his mouth went up at the corners, and then he laughed a little, very small and hesitant. Gimli laughed too, relieved to smooth over the moment of discomfort.

“It is a very pretty song,” Legolas said, half jesting and half petulant.

“I do not doubt it,” Gimli said. “You will have to sing it for me sometime. And I would greatly appreciate the gift of such a sight- tomorrow evening, perhaps? When I am better rested. We do not all have the stamina of the elves, loathe as I am to admit it.”

“Of course,” Legolas said. “I am sorry.”

He was so genuinely distressed, and it perplexed Gimli. He found that he did not like to hear the way Legolas’s high voice grew thready when he was upset. “Perhaps I could make an attempt,” he heard himself say. Who was Gimli son of Gloin, to be defeated by stairs? Dwarves had stairs too! The Dimrill Stair descended far, far deeper into the earth than any tree reached up towards the stars. But no- don’t think about that. Don’t remember. 

“No,” Legolas said, “but it is all right, I have thought of something else. Here, I shall show you the crafters’ hall. You will be interested in the architecture, I think.”

The hall was located down on the ground, on a lawn of grass. Like the other buildings here, it did not have much in common with the styles he’d seen in Rivendell, except that both shared a general desire to appear lighter and more insubstantial than they actually were. Which looked very odd to Gimli. Buildings should look comfortingly solid, especially when they were up off the ground. But just because it wasn’t to his taste didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate the way ceiling beams, carved like living mallorn branches, supported a greater weight than he would have guessed they could, or wonder at the near-invisible seams between two planks. It would all have been more pleasant if he couldn’t feel the hostility of every elf around them. It all blended together, the strange unreality of the place, his exhaustion, the glares, his confusion and dizziness over Lady Galadriel, and now Legolas’s sudden solicitousness. 

“I don’t think I am welcome here,” he said. But the wood was warm under his hand, so silver it glowed as the light changed. He had to get out of this place- he didn’t want to leave. He couldn’t think straight. He looked at the elves with their pale faces staring at him with a flat dislike that was cool and utterly alien. 

“You’re tired,” Legolas said. “Shall we go to the river? It will be quieter.”

“Quiet would be welcome,” Gimli said. “It has been a long day, that is for certain.”

The golden light was almost gone, and Gimli blinked to rest his tired eyes, and then drew in a gasp of breath, as large silver lamps flickered into radiance throughout the forest. It was more than bright enough to see the paths by; it was probably bright enough for a Man to read by. Legolas’s hand was on Gimli’s arm. He followed his guide a short way down a gravel path, to where the river danced and laughed in its rocky bed.

The Silverlode ran narrow here, or more likely this was a tributary brook. The bank was covered with grass as thick as the lawn by the silver fountain. Gimli sat down heavily. Legolas, sitting down beside him, seemed more to drift down, alighting upon the ground like a butterfly upon the stem of a leaf. The elf removed his cloak and cast it carelessly down beside him, and shook his head so the long ink-black hair spilled smooth and straight down his back. How different it was from Galadriel’s! Gimli felt an inappropriate urge to run his fingers through it. He wanted to take off his mail shirt and leather and stretch out on this riverbank, and wait to find out if you could see the stars at night through the gaps in the leaves. But Legolas was there. Legolas, who generally put Gimli on his guard, on alert for those casual comments about the superiority of elves and the inferiority of those who dwelt in holes and whose ancestors hadn’t come from a paradise over the ocean that no one but elves had ever seen. Who had not argued when Haldir had told Gimli he must submit and be blindfolded, and led through the wood as a prisoner, more than that, as something unclean. Gimli sat on the grass in this place and felt its heavy peace working its way into his mind and knew, also, that he was not wanted here. This healing was not for him.

But the Lady had welcomed him as one would an old friend.

“Why spend time with a Dwarf?” he asked Legolas. “When you are here among so many of your own people?” There had been an odd alliance between them at times on the road, when they had forgotten their people were enemies and only known that they were both alone with no kinsmen beside them, among the Hobbits with their close impenetrable bonds and the Men who, though strangers, were closely tied together by fate and history and more. But it was only ever an alliance of outsiders. Legolas was not an outsider any more, not here. 

Legolas did not meet his eyes, but reached down to remove his shoes, and dip his feet up to the ankles in the clear water. Gimli decided to follow suit, and if an elf took offense to his dirty dwarven feet they would have to deal with that for themselves.

The sound of the water blended melodiously with the songs of night birds up above, and Gimli felt himself relax. The water itself was refreshingly cool but not cold as the mountain streams had been cold.

“They’re not… entirely my own people,” Legolas said after a while. 

Gimli made an enquiring sound, but didn’t move his gaze from the running water, whose motion was somewhat hypnotic.

“It is complicated,” Legolas says, frustration in his voice. “It always is, with us. It is not just about a straight line of descendance, like you and your ancestor Durin. Well, part of it is. And part of it is not.”

Gimli almost snorted at the elf’s assumption that dwarven politics were so simple, and that Legolas understood it all simply because he’d realized that Gimli was of Durin’s line, but he managed to refrain.

“I suppose to you, all Elves must look the same,” Legolas said, sounding as though this had only just occurred to him. 

Gimli tried to think of a good answer to that, and could not. “Yes. Of course.”

“But surely you could see that the Lady Galadriel and I are not of the same family?”

Gimli wished he could speak his mind and say, _ Friend, it took me quite a while to realize you and the Lady were not of the same gender. _

“It does not matter,” Legolas said. “I will not burden you with it.” His long, slender fingers trailed through the clear water. “I feel I have changed, these last few months, and I would rather be with someone who has been at my side for all of it.”

The phrasing of it- at my side- resonated in Gimli’s ears. Not a phrasing he would have thought of, not when they really had rarely walked at each others’ side, when Legolas so liked to stride ahead of the Company and Gimli sometimes found himself slowing behind, distracted by a vein of rock or variety of flower that reminded him of home. But now that Legolas had spoken the words, they sounded right. 

Still, he asked, “Would not Aragorn-” 

Legolas let out a huff of a breath. “Oh, you never stop, do you? Is that a trait of dwarves? Let us simply enjoy the evening, without picking apart our feelings.”

“All right,” Gimli said. “Will you sing me that song you spoke of? About the setting of the sun, and the golden trees?”

“My heart is still too heavy for song, I fear,” Legolas said. “It would please me if…”

Gimli waited to hear the rest of the sentence, but it never came. “Yes?” he prompted, looking up into Legolas’s face. The elf was flushed. It made him look less alien, more familiar, than Gimli could ever remember him being before. 

“You sang very skilfully, down in the mines,” Legolas said, stumbling a little over his words. “I would- I would gladly hear another song from you.”

Gimli felt surprise, and then warm pleasure. He cast around in his mind for a song. Not another song of the past, he decided. He needed time, and he needed to speak with his kinfolk, to untangle the heavy knot of emotions he had felt in Khazad-dum, that he still felt now, thinking of the Book of Mazarbul, carefully wrapped and lying in his pack back in the tent. 

So after a moment’s thought he sang a song he’d learned as a child, about the joy of the forge and the anvil, the power of creation, and the day that would one day come when Mahal’s children would make the new world. The tune was so familiar to him, the feeling of singing it so comforting, that the strangeness of his surroundings seemed to wash away as he sang, and he might have been at home, surrounded by the embrace of the earth, the voices of his people echoing through the corridors around him. 

When the song finished, Legolas was still looking at him, eyes wide. 

“Did you like it?” Gimli asked.

“It was beautiful,” Legolas said, and his voice was shaking. 

“I will happily sing it for you again,” Gimli said. “Whenever you would like.” 

The rustle of wind through the leaves felt like the voices of family, the grass beneath him was nothing more strange than the quilt his uncle had made him when he was young, and next to him sat- 

A friend, Gimli realized, and felt glad.


End file.
